Here.
It is not exactly the case that the rebels are controlled by Moscow because Moscow never wanted this war in the first place and to this day, they still want a federated and intact Ukraine and they oppose independence for the Donbass. However, the NAF is determined to split away from the Ukraine to form their own state. So the two do not agree on these things. However, Moscow is willing to arm the NAF as long as fighting is going on. But Moscow would prefer to see this war over as soon as possible as it doesn’t benefit them in any way.
The NAF wants to go all the way to the borders of Donetsk and Lugansk at least to create their new country, and Moscow doesn’t care about that. Moscow would just as soon freeze the conflict as it is right here. This is the “frozen conflict solution” and it doesn’t solve much of anything. Instead, half of the Donbass would end up like Transdniestria, Abkhazia or South Ossetia, in permanent limbo. Any settlement that does not set the borders at the edge of Lugansk and Donetsk means more fighting as the NAF will fight until they can liberate all of the Donbass, not just the half that they have liberated now.
Another problem is that there are armed militias right now in Kharkiv, Odessa, Kherson and Zaporozhye. They will not accept this agreement and they will keep on fighting. They are already waging an underground low-level war as it is. There was a bomb attack on a bank in Odessa yesterday and the same day, a bomb was found and disarmed on a railroad tracks. A bridge was blown up in Zaporozhye a week ago. These guerrillas are not controlled by anyone, though no doubt they have contacts with the NAF.
Russia has tried very hard to get the NAF under its control due to the NAF’s rebelliousness. Russian troops “vacationers” were sent in to try to shift the conflict in Moscow’s direction. And frighteningly, Moscow was apparently behind several assassinations of high level NAF leaders who it considered disobedient.
However, in a sense, the NAF does have to obey Moscow. Moscow draws the limits on what the NAF can do. If the NAF starts getting out of control and keeps fighting when Moscow wants a ceasefire or keeps seizing territory when Moscow wants them to stop grabbing land, Moscow will simply cut off the cash and weapons flow to the NAF. Moscow holds the purse-strings in this conflict, so the NAF are not exactly free agents and are limited by whatever limits Moscow wishes to put on this war. But I assure you that the NAF and Moscow have very different agendas, and they don’t even like each other much. So in that sense, the NAF are not Russia’s “proxies” in any way, shape or form.
